WOODLAWN MANSION

Photograph, Woodlawn Mansion in Austin, Texas. Once owned by Governor Elisha Pease, it is presently owned by the Shivers family. Image courtesy of the Texas Historical Commission provided to The Portal to Texas History. Image available on the Internet and included in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107.

WOODLAWN MANSION. Woodlawn is the largest of the four remaining two-story Greek Revival mansions built in the 1850s by Austin's master builder Abner H. Cook. Designed for James B. Shaw, Texas state comptroller, the house was finished in 1853, one year before Cook built the Governor's Mansion. The house is made of local brick, probably from Cook's own kilns, and is distinguished by a fine east-facing front portico with two-story Ionic columns and a small balcony at the second story center hall. The floor plan of the main block, like the Governor's Mansion, has two large rooms facing each side of a wide center hall. The north side of Woodlawn, however, has an additional small ell-shaped porch with three two-story Doric columns. In the twentieth century the considerable acreage surrounding the house was developed into a neighborhood of elegant homes, and the mansion is now on a large, beautifully landscaped lot at 6 Niles Road. Almost as soon as the building was completed Shaw abandoned the idea of living there because of family tragedies. On June 13, 1859, Governor Elisha Marshall Pease bought Woodlawn, and it remained in his family for many years. In 1957 Governor Allan Shivers and his wife refurbished Woodlawn as their home and had the brick painted pale pink. In 1961 the Texas Historical Commission erected a historical marker on the house. In 1994 the Shivers family still owned the house.

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